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Robert Berkeley 00:06
Well, hello once again. I'm Robert Barkley, and welcome back to Inside Jobs, the podcast where we delve into the world of in house agencies and the creative minds that shape them. Inside Jobs is brought to you by the in house agency forum, IHAF, the trade association for brands with in house agencies where knowledge is shared and careers mutually supported, and EKCS who work with in house agencies to help them perform their very best by carrying out all of their creative production. Now, today I'm thrilled to have Keith Lowell, a highly awarded creative leader whose experience spans the globe. But currently he's in Pittsburgh, where he's leading the creative team at Tonic, which is the in house agency for Highmark Health. Some of you may remember that Highmark Health won the in house agency of the year last year. Is that right, Keith?

Keith Loell 00:57
That is correct.

Robert Berkeley 00:58
Very proud moment. We're going to find out how you got to that point. You do bring a unique perspective and a very global perspective as well. And you've got some rather unusual and possibly controversial ideas about how to foster creativity. But just before we dig into your past, can you just very quickly set out who you are and what you do and just a little bit about tonic?

Keith Loell 01:18
Yeah, sure. Of course. I am a director, and director comes first, not creative. So I am a director of creative and innovation at Tonic. Within Highmark Health, obviously we focus on health care, but it spans across insurance products and clinics and hospitals, and so we do both provider and payer, and we also have some technology companies within Highmark health that help support the healthcare industry. So a lot going on.

Robert Berkeley 01:47
Wow. Okay. So how big is the team you've got there, Keith?

Keith Loell 01:49
Well, Robert, it's hard to pin down an absolutely definitive number, but roughly, I'd say 125 plus.

Robert Berkeley 01:58
That's a good size in house team, I have to say.

Keith Loell 02:02
Yes. And it didn't start that way. I think when I joined, we had probably about 30 or 40 people. So past five years have been a lot of growth.

Robert Berkeley 02:10
Wow. There certainly has. Well, I'm very keen to learn more about that, but let's go back to the beginning because we want to know how you got there and what shaped you and the way you approach things. You are a creative by training, as you said. But let's go way back. Where are you from and what were your kind of, what was your early background like and your early influences? And did it lead into creativity?

Keith Loell 02:29
Huh, good question. So I am a western Pennsylvania boy. So I started here, but your home? Well, vaguely, I started a little bit north of here in a place called Erie, Pennsylvania. And so my family is artistic. My mom is a weaver.

Robert Berkeley 02:47
Lovely.

Keith Loell 02:48
And a very, very good one, a very accomplished one.

Robert Berkeley 02:50
Very artisanal.

Keith Loell 02:51
Yes, exactly. But I would say that teaching is the family business. I am the black sheep. My brother is a retired teacher. My sister is also the same. My dad was a teacher. Aunts, uncles, just pretty much what everybody did. I was the person who was always drawing.

Robert Berkeley 03:07
That informed your education, I guess then to pursue that, it did.

Keith Loell 03:10
But strangely enough, when I went off to college, I didn't go for art. I was just in sort of the humanities, as they called them, studying. But people study when they plan on becoming lawyers or business people.

Robert Berkeley 03:23
So when you signed up and you were in your first day at college, if I'd met you then and said, keith, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do when you leave college? What would you have told me?

Keith Loell 03:31
I would have told you I don't have any idea.

Robert Berkeley 03:35
But not a teacher.

Keith Loell 03:36
Not a teacher, exactly. But that first year that I was at Carnegie Mellon University, which is where I went, I sort of drifted into an artistic kind of crowd. Theater designers, graphic designers, you know, painters.

Robert Berkeley 03:47
Andy Warhol down the road, I guess.

Keith Loell 03:49
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, some fairly well known contemporary painters were there when I was there, too. John Curran, a few others. So I found my people.

Robert Berkeley 03:57
I could be a fine artist.

Keith Loell 03:59
Well, no, I didn't, actually. As I was hanging out with these folks in their studios and seeing what they were doing, I kind of thought that actually, graphic design was really interesting to me and a mixture of sort of art and rigor and craft and words and pictures. The other thing, too, is, though, I also was very interested in writing, so I took a lot of creative writing classes, fiction, long format writing, when I was in university, too. So, again, in terms of a marketing or advertising background, even though that's not what I planned on doing, those were the kinds of things that helped inform.

Robert Berkeley 04:33
I bet your copywriters on your team love it when you walk into the room then, because you obviously have this interest in writing, and I'm sure you have an opinion on everything they write.

Keith Loell 04:40
Well, I do. The interesting thing, though, is that during my career, I sort of switched back and forth between copywriting and art direction. Exactly. Yes.

Robert Berkeley 04:50
I bet they love you even more then. Yeah, I can help you there.

Keith Loell 04:53
I can help the wrong appraisal. Jeff. Goodbye. Who once said, you know, there's lots of words to choose from. You've selected the wrong ones here, or something to that very kind way to put it.

Robert Berkeley 05:06
So where did the leap come into the advertising business? You really, your career was formed working on in traditional agencies, correct?

Keith Loell 05:14
Yes, it was. So I started off as a after university at a YdEZ graphic design, you know, branding sort of agency. Very good one. Folks who worked with Paul Rand at the Westinghouse Design center and started their own business.

Robert Berkeley 05:26
And this was in the burg, was it?

Keith Loell 05:27
This was in Pittsburgh, yeah, a place called Agnew Moyersmith. But during that time period, I was very interested in film. And so after a couple of years working in design and kind of doing the film stuff on the side, I kind of quickly realized that I was much more attracted to stuff that wasn't just, you know, let's say corporate design, logo designed to information design. And so I strapped together a portfolio and slogged around to some of the Pittsburgh advertising agencies and managed to get a job at one at the time, which was Della Famine and Macnami WCRS here in Pittsburgh. Fairly well.

Robert Berkeley 06:02
Sounds like a radio station to me.

Keith Loell 06:04
That was during the time when, you know, agencies were getting bought, combined, sold, names changed. Yeah. So I worked for a couple of years at that advertising agency, and then there's a little bit of a recession there back at the end of the early nineties.

Robert Berkeley 06:20
But you were literally everything you had taught yourself and the avenues you'd explored as a student before you were a student, and everything about, you know, for your parents inputs, it seems to all sort of come together in your first job almost, doesn't it? That's exactly as you say. The copywriting, the visual, you've got the film interest, you've got the drafting, you've got the writing. It's all there in one neat package for Keith's career to just go off like a rocket, quite honestly. I mean, that's what it feels like. You've got all the fuel there, right?

Keith Loell 06:48
Yes, exactly. And again, one of those things that, you know, as soon as I kind of walked in the door at this agency, I was off shooting tv commercials and art, directing print ads. And so I really did realize, exactly as you said, that all of those things that I was interested in and that I had dabbled in and studied, they all kind of came together in the advertising and marketing world.

Robert Berkeley 07:11
Wow. So you are one of those who truly followed their heart, right? You weren't thinking, oh, this is going to be a well paid job, I'll be able to afford a mortgage. You were thinking, well, this just is what I enjoy doing.

Keith Loell 07:20
That's. Yes, that is absolutely true. I never really have had sort of a lot of, let's just say, financial motivation or even job security motivation over my career. It's always been like, this is all of the things that I love to do happening all at once. And so I have enjoyed that aspect of the job.

Robert Berkeley 07:39
Well, from that point on, we could call you the human boomerang, because you've been to Singapore, you've been to Zurich, you've worked in New York. How did those moves come about? And how also did each of those places and those experiences working around the world shape the way you see the world now?

Keith Loell 07:53
Yes. Well, gosh, it's always a little, it's like a really good lesson for me that I keep reminding of myself is that, you know, if you do some things, some things will happen. So I, again, it's one of those.

Robert Berkeley 08:04
By the way, if you do nothing, nothing often happens.

Keith Loell 08:06
That is exactly. So while I was at Della Firmina, there was a very famous creative director named Neil French who worked in Singapore, and he was part of our network. And so every once in a while, like, there would be, like, a newsletter. That agency, which was the ball partnership at the time, had published, and it would show up. And basically it was him trying to recruit creative people from all over the world to come to Singapore and work there.

Robert Berkeley 08:30
Okay.

Keith Loell 08:30
But they were wonderfully written and art directed and made it sound impossibly exotic and fun.

Robert Berkeley 08:36
Well, I think as a 21, 22 year old in Pittsburgh, it probably did sound impossibly exotic. It sounds impossibly exotic to me.

Keith Loell 08:42
Yeah. So I basically just did some research. I went to the library, and they had this thing called, remember that the red book? And the red book was like the yellow pages of global commerce. And inside there was every single advertising agency office in the world, and the leadership and the address. And I put together some little mini portfolios and cover letters, and I don't know why. I decided I was going to start off with Hong Kong, and I sent off about 30 of these things to every single creative director with a spam, with a stamp on, and they all went out in the mail. And then I promptly sort of forgot about it for probably, it feels like it was at least a few months.

Robert Berkeley 09:19
Well, they wouldn't get there for a month anyway, would they? Chances?

Keith Loell 09:23
And then one day, a letter showed up in my mailbox.

Robert Berkeley 09:26
Wow.

Keith Loell 09:26
Just a single response from a man named Martin Lee, who is the creative director at Leo Burnett in Hong Kong, saying, mate, if you want to work here, you're going to have to get yourself on a plane and come and do some freelance for a while, and then you'll eventually get hired. Your work looks great, but that's how it usually gets done. And I was like, I'm no way I'm going to hop on a plane with no prospects, fly to Hong Kong. And then at the end of the letter, he did say that if you're really interested in doing great creative work, you're much better off sniffing around Singapore because they have a wonderful sort of community and they do amazing work and they've got super talented people there. He said, you might want to contact these three people. So I put together three more packages and sent them off to Singapore. And again, a few months go by and another letter falls into my mailbox. And this one is from a man named Danny Higgins, who is creative director at Saatchi and Saatchi in Singapore. And basically it was exactly the same letter. And then at the end of that letter, it said, but I do know of a smaller shop called Adcomm and Grey who recently has been looking for some senior art direction or kind of creative directors level sort of help. Here's a name that you can write a letter off to. So again, it's down to one letter. I packaged together, threw it into the, into the mail, and I was at home and I had a little home office and had a fax machine. And, like, 03:00 in the morning about maybe again, about a month later, I hear the fax machine spitting out something. Exactly. So the next morning I took a look at it, and it was actually an offer letter cited.

Robert Berkeley 10:59
You didn't get out of bed to watch it come in. You just lay there. Oh, another offer, another part of the world.

Keith Loell 11:05
I just thought it was something drearier, like, you know, oh, yeah, there used.

Robert Berkeley 11:08
To be judge faxes, didn't I? Forgot about that.

Keith Loell 11:10
Or else, like, something like, you know, youre rent is due. So I took a look at it, and it was an offer letter. Like, no interview, no phone interview, no nothing. It was just an offer of a job. And there was, and the other thing, it was like twice as much as I had been making in the United States, which I thought was awesome. But of course, when I got there, I found out it was half of what other people were making. I sold everything or put it in storage, grabbed two suitcases, hopped on a plane and flew to Singapore.

Robert Berkeley 11:39
And this began this series of foreign sort of postings, as it were. So how long was that whole period?

Keith Loell 11:45
So I was in Singapore for about four and a half, five years, hopped around to a few different agencies, and that's during the time when David Drogo was there and lots of also really famous folks. And that was just a wonderful experience. Met my wife, got married, my son was born there, and then we decided to move back to the United States.

Robert Berkeley 12:02
And so I am curious, how did it affect you if you hadn't done it? How would you be different now?

Keith Loell 12:09
I would be totally different. I mean, that single event is probably the most important thing that ever happened in my entire life.

Robert Berkeley 12:16
The child or the wife?

Keith Loell 12:17
No, neither. The fax machine spitting out an offer. That single event, you know, which, again, was, you know, a combination of, you know, a little bit of push on my side, a little bit of perseverance, but really, it came down to just one person.

Robert Berkeley 12:35
But why?

Keith Loell 12:36
Why was it giving me a little bit of help? Giving me a little bit of help.

Robert Berkeley 12:39
But why was it. Why was it the most important thing that happened?

Keith Loell 12:42
Well, because I think the places that I've lived have basically changed my entire perspective on the world. You know, again, I would never have met my awesome and terrifying wife. I would not have had my brilliant son. And all of the experiences that I feel have changed.

Robert Berkeley 13:00
It's changed you as a person. In what way? That's what I'm getting at, really. You're back in Pittsburgh. You've kind of come full circle. I know you're in New York bit as well, but it's given you what difference?

Keith Loell 13:10
Well, first of all, just a broader perspective on the United States and where I live now in the city of Pittsburgh.

Robert Berkeley 13:16
The culture within which you operate, the culture that you address through your work as well.

Keith Loell 13:20
Exactly. And a much better ability to sort of understand the things that human beings all over the world have in common. And there's a lot of them, but also just some of those really wonderful and special little differences in, you know, the way people think, how they dress, the food they eat. I can't imagine myself being an interesting person, to be honest with you, if I had not taken that journey.

Robert Berkeley 13:44
Yeah. Yeah. So I think what I'd like to do is move into the transition you made. Eventually, after working for a whole series of agencies, you did go back to Pittsburgh, and then you transitioned to an in house agency. What precipitated this change?

Keith Loell 14:00
I had been sort of consulting and freelancing for, I don't know, maybe a year or so, and I had. I was missing a sense of belonging in home and, you know, the kind of collective, creative family that agencies bring. I hadn't really considered an in house gig, to be honest with you.

Robert Berkeley 14:17
You were aware of them. You were aware of phenomena, because this was. When was it? You were there. You joined in 2018.

Keith Loell 14:23
Yeah, 2018. But there was one thing that was going on in my head and that which was a major factor in terms of going in house, but more specifically at Highmark Health is that over the course of my career, I had worked on. I can't imagine if there is a category or a type of product that I have not done advertising for and getting older. You have a sense of, am I really that interested in selling more beer or chips or whatever? And so when the opportunity to talk to the folks at Highmark Health came along, as I was having conversations with them, I sort of realized that I have always been the type of person who felt most comfortable and excited and alive in building situations. I've been in agencies that were started either in transition and needed to be revitalized or small and niche that wanted to expand. And that's always been the time I liked being in situations where it was a bit of a mess or a bit unformed. And this goes back even to talking about tonic and how big we are now and how small we were when I started. And so those situations have always been the ones that I felt most, like I said, most excited about.

Robert Berkeley 15:40
So you obviously go talk to them and you get the gig. But what is it that you're inheriting at that point? Back in 2018? In 20, was it 20 16? 20 18.

Keith Loell 15:50
20 18. Yeah. So I think at that point, we still had large external agencies of records working on both the Highmark brand and also our hospital network, Allegheny Health Network aid, obviously paying millions of dollars, and they were doing, you know, sort of big agency stuff. Then.

Robert Berkeley 16:08
What was the point of the department you were joining? Were they like document services then?

Keith Loell 16:12
Yes, they're creative services and doing smaller things. Yeah, exactly. You know, lots of brochures and. But there's also leadership there, from the CMO to my direct boss, a guy named Scott Mercer, who, they had a plan, and that's one of the reasons I joined.

Robert Berkeley 16:28
That's what I was getting at. They had a vision that they knew he wanted it to be more than that.

Keith Loell 16:32
They had done some foundational groundwork in terms of pulling in all these disparate little creative groups from various brands within Highmark health and combining them together and consolidating that. But the plan was to build a proper, full service, in house agency with world class creative. And so that was the plan from the beginning, and that is the only reason why I joined, because there was that plan, but it still needed to be done.

Robert Berkeley 17:02
I think there's a cautionary tale there, because you see so many in house agencies that are trying to push their influence upstream, but without a sponsor, it's almost impossible. But when you've got a sponsor and they have a vision and they share the vision, even if you've helped inform that vision, that helps you build out. Did you become, in fact, an AOR in your own right then?

Keith Loell 17:25
Oh, yes, absolutely. We don't have any agencies of record for any of our brands within Highmark.

Robert Berkeley 17:30
So let's hear about that journey then, from when you started to being the AOR, how did that come about?

Keith Loell 17:34
Well, it came out money is power. So it came about by pouring through the books, clawing back budget from all of the various lines of business, taking control of all of the marketing budget ourselves.

Robert Berkeley 17:49
Did you meet resistance in terms of.

Keith Loell 17:50
Oh, my gosh, of course. Of course. And it took.

Robert Berkeley 17:52
Without the sponsor, you couldn't have.

Keith Loell 17:54
We could not have. And another note on the sponsor, too. Our sponsor was Cindy Donahoe, who recently, as she says, rewired, not retired, but rewired. And she was such a strong and powerful advocate for that plan. And the other thing, too, is that as CMO, you know, there are lots of different CMO constellations where they sit within any organization. And because she reported directly to our CEO, didn't come up, didn't sit underneath, let's just say, any of the business lines. She was, you know, independent operator. She had a lot of influence. And that's. That's the only reason why we were able to do that. We took control of all of those budgets. You know, we built up the creative force account, you know, account service, force. All the, you know, project management brought in, you know, all the processes that a big agency would have. Most of the leadership, I'd say, or much of the leadership either came from external agency world or a combination of external experience plus in house experience, obviously. Amy Spears are the amazing.

Robert Berkeley 19:04
Sorry, the amazing Amy Spears.

Keith Loell 19:06
Not just Amy Spears.

Robert Berkeley 19:07
She has a title. Let's.

Keith Loell 19:09
She is the amazing. Amy Spears has both agency and in house background.

Robert Berkeley 19:13
So how did you end up building an in house agency? Say you've got to around 130 people. Does it look from any angle like a traditional agency? Is it different? And if so, how is it different?

Keith Loell 19:23
I would say that it does look like an external agency. We have creative or business focused groups we call pods, that work on a line of business, just like an external agency of record would work on, you know, that particular client. I would say, however, that the way that we interact with, say, marketing strategy in our lines of business is not the same. It's not. We have worked so hard, and we have some wonderful folks that do not sit within the agency or marketing our business partners, who we've developed like a relationship that feels much more like we're just rowing together in the same direction.

Robert Berkeley 20:02
So not like a client.

Keith Loell 20:03
No, it's not like a client. And as a matter of fact, and just even in terms of language, for the most part, we have scrubbed the word client out of any meetings, any vocabulary, any references to our business partners, our strategy partners. It has been a long time since I've heard anybody say, like, from the business side, well, I'm the client or they're the client. We don't, we don't even use that terminology anymore. And very purposefully, we worked on that for a long time to remove it from our vocabulary.

Robert Berkeley 20:32
Partnership is the order of the day. It's working together to achieve a common goal.

Keith Loell 20:36
Absolutely. And focused exclusively on our customers, the people we serve, and customers being the consumer. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So we don't have clients, but we do have customers. And we do have, if we have clients, then they are the companies that we provide insurance to. But it's nobody internal.

Robert Berkeley 20:54
Yeah.

Keith Loell 20:55
So that's, you know, in terms of culture, again, very purposeful, but. And took quite a bit of work to get there. But I think that's the thing. To me, that is the biggest differentiator between an external agency. So no matter how much we talk about partnership as an external agency, you're still, you're a vendor, you know, and there is a power dynamic there that, you know, it's just inherent.

Robert Berkeley 21:16
The common concern people level at in house agencies is, of course, that you can get stale as a creative working on the same brand or brands. You have multiple brands, of course. But how would you counter that? Because you had a fantastic career not only being stimulated kind of culturally around the world, but also being stimulated by everything from potato chips to beers. As you mentioned earlier, you're doing the same old thing here, day in, day out, and your creative people are doing the same thing day in, day out. How do you, it's an eternal question. How do you keep those creative juices flowing and keep people stimulated?

Keith Loell 21:48
Well, again, one of those aspects of this job that made me interested in the first place is that, like I said, we have more than just a single product or a single brand. So doing insurance advertising is a lot different than doing marketing for network of hospitals. So right there, those two major things then we also have a handful of technology brands, United, Concordia, dental. So there is quite a large amount of variety within that space itself. So that's the first thing. The second thing is in terms of the variety of channels that we work in, there are just tons of awesome opportunities. We do a lot of sponsorships that allow us to do great experiential work, you know, get us out of the house and that, you know, Buffalo Bills football games, you know, Highmark Stadium. So there's. There actually is a. A bit of sex and glamour believe it or not, within the whole company and the industry itself.

Robert Berkeley 22:47
No wonder you've been able to grow your agency so fast with those sort of attractive perks of the job. But nevertheless you still got to keep the creative juices going. You know, you're not going off to Cannes and hobnobbing with other creatives and so on necessarily. And Pittsburgh, you know, it's a beautiful. It's one of my favorite cities. I spent a lot of time there but it isn't New York or San Francisco. Are there any kind of key tricks you've got up your sleeve and ideas of how to flow of creativity from your people?

Keith Loell 23:13
Just to clarify, a good 25% of our people don't live in Pittsburgh and I'd say it's probably even higher within the creative department. We have people who live in New York, people who live in Los Angeles.

Robert Berkeley 23:24
More of a challenge though, you might argue, in terms of alignment and cultural alignment.

Keith Loell 23:29
Well it would be if we hadn't had our brains and our habits utterly destroyed by the COVID I mean it absolutely changed everything. We had to quickly figure out how to work well together sitting alone in the isolation of our homes. And we still do. We still have a hybrid model in terms of work. A small number of people are required to come into the office, but not five days a week, 8 hours a day. We do most of our work virtually and I found that by itself keeps people a little bit fresh in terms of perspective and gives them a little bit of extra interesting.

Robert Berkeley 24:08
You think work from home is conducive to creativity? Creative thinking?

Keith Loell 24:12
I got to be honest with you Robert. When it first. When we first were kind of isolated and we had to scramble to put together stuff, I felt as though more productive and that we could actually measure that we were. The whole team was more productive. And I believe just subjectively the quality of the work got better and I don't know how to account for that entirely. But I do believe that people, given the ability to wander out their door or play with a dog or take a break and go walk in the park if you have a half an hour. A lot of these sort of the flexibility that the working virtual provides, I think, is just really healthy for creative development in people's brains. And I do think, and we found ways to collaborate. We bring people together frequently, you know, in physical spaces, fly them in from wherever we have. Sometimes it's just to work on a specific project. Sometimes it's simply to get together and talk about bigger topics. But we try to keep that physical connection going. Folks who are in Pittsburgh tend to gather together off site someplace, coffee shops, and work together. So I don't look at it as us trapped in our homes, trying desperately to kind of connect creatively with each other. I think it just provides so much more flexibility, which to me, leads to better ideas.

Robert Berkeley 25:37
But the idea of creativity, you know, is often said that it comes from, first of all, have a problem you need to solve and then do nothing, and then you'll solve the problem. And this is a tried and tested technique, and you're really talking there, Keith, if I dare say it, about wasting time.

Keith Loell 25:51
I am, I am, I am. And one thing that I've always thought, too, that was quite interesting, or something that I've felt to be true, is the idea that you can't seek out ideas. Ideas come to you. In order for that to happen, you have to be sort of in a passive state. You have to be, you know, because the minute that you start tracking them down or grinding them out, it just doesn't work. So that's why I do believe definitely that wasted time, procrastination periods, all these qualities, all these qualities are essential to coming up with really great ideas. I just want to clarify, too, there are some problems within our world that we do every day that don't require that. A lot of work which is an extension of a existing campaign and extra asset here or there, that's the kind of work that is craftsmanship, understanding what you've done before, experience, brand, tone of voice and things like that. But truly original, novel, unexpected, delightful, counterintuitive ideas need a gestation period, time for things to foster. You know, we've got millions of ping pong balls in our brain, and they need time to juggle around, then spit out some combinations. And I've just found that the times when that happens aren't when you're sitting in front of your computer, you're taking a walk, you're taking a shower, doing something else and then or sometimes playing.

Robert Berkeley 27:17
With these newfangled AI related tools.

Keith Loell 27:20
Well, that's interesting, too. Yes, it does happen sometimes. But, you know, these tools can't tell themselves what to do. So you have to have kind of an idea, or at least the beginnings of an idea to get them to start, you know, shooting out variations, iterations, maybe something surprising that you didn't expect, which takes the idea to a different place. I think that they are amazing tools. And I think to me one of the big benefits is that they can take all of that stuff that's in your brain, but you have a hard time kind of articulating or translating into a deck layout something to show people to say here, this madness, see how awesome it is. That's what these tools are great for, is getting all of those thoughts from your head into a form that you can communicate with other people in a really short period of time. And so that's right now where we're focusing in terms of how can we use these tools to help creative people translate, you know, thoughts that are difficult to articulate very quickly into stimulus to show other people get approval, get other people excited about them. So that's, that's, to me, just a.

Robert Berkeley 28:29
It doesn't sound like you're afraid of them, Keith.

Keith Loell 28:30
Oh, my God. No, I am definitely not afraid of them. I do understand that there's going to be, there's implications for, you know, the use of AI in terms of, you know, jobs will change to anybody who thinks that some people are going to not lose their jobs or nobody's going to lose their job, I think that's a little bit foolish. I think a lot of people are going to have to kind of rethink about what they do or how they do it, but it's just huge potential for creative people to, like I said, articulate the things that are difficult to articulate in a really short period of time. And so, yeah, that's what we're, that's what we're working on right now.

Robert Berkeley 29:06
Well, before we wrap up, I just want to circle back to what you have today with your 130 people. I'm very curious. It is quite a big team. What is it they take on and what is it they don't take on? In other words, what is it you really want them to be famous for? I suppose is what I'm asking. And where do you lean on others or externals? Because I'm pretty sure even with 130 people, you don't do everything that is required. How does that split work?

Keith Loell 29:31
I would say that we are always most interested in activities, marketing activities that really build our brands in a very public way. That's one thing. One of the other areas that we really focus on is health literacy. And so that's both internal and external. And helping the people who we serve understand this incomprehensible medical environment and complicated insurance products.

Robert Berkeley 30:04
And you are particularly renowned for your community outreach, right? Right. I mean, that's a very strong part of what you are as a business.

Keith Loell 30:11
Yes. And then how we communicate complicated medical information to patients. And so we've actually won quite a few awards for that, also plain language awards. But it's something that we work on constantly and is part of our DNA. So anything that requires complicated, maybe stressful and unpleasant information and turning it into something that really helps people is something we focus on.

Robert Berkeley 30:36
So, Keith, I just want to thank you. That's all that remains. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

Keith Loell 30:41
Thank you. Robert is always a joy and a lot of fun to hang out and chat with you.

Robert Berkeley 30:48
Likewise. And I've got to learn a little bit more about your journey from this interview than I knew before. And for that, I'm also very grateful to our listeners. I hope you found the conversation stimulating and enlightening and inspiring. Remember, this podcast is brought to you by the in house agency forum IHAF and EKCS, your partners in enhancing in house agency performance. Now you can go to our website, ijpodcast.com, where you can listen to over 50 other interviews with creative leaders. I know. Astounding, isn't it? Either way, till next time, I hope you will join us. Keep pushing the boundaries of creativity and keep making a market wherever you are in the world.